After breakfast, it was nearly time to tidy up and head out.
Just as Xiao Lan had said, Mini was very attached to Huo Yan. She insisted on sitting on Huo Yan’s lap for the entire meal, rubbing against her while Huo Yan ate.
Even when Huo Yan was about to leave, she had to be personally coaxed and placed on the sofa. Huo Yan would then wave goodbye to the little princess from the wheelchair at the front door before Mini would reluctantly let her leave.
After the door closed, and before getting into the car, Huo Yan would clean the cat hair off herself in the front yard.
She did this outside because Mini would be sad if she saw her cleaning it off inside.
All the staff in the house, including Alice, Xiao Lan, and the other two maids, would gather to remove the cat hair from Huo Yan, from head to toe, ensuring not a single strand remained.
Lan Su observed this and thought it was absolutely necessary.
Huo Yan was the Jade King of Hell who had shaken the entire jewelry and even the business world. If she were discovered to be a cat lover, her authority would greatly diminish.
The property transfer process went smoothly. Lan Su acquired a commercial center in the city with no effort. The staff handling the paperwork stole several glances at her, their eyes practically boring into her, yet they couldn’t figure out anything particularly outstanding about her.
Lan Su acted as if she noticed nothing, signing where required and pressing her fingerprints when asked, being utterly cooperative.
After the formalities were done, the private car headed towards the largest private beauty salon in Lanbin City.
Along the way, the two barely spoke, and if recorded, their words wouldn’t exceed 10 characters.
Bland.
In the driver’s seat, the assistant, Jiang Feng, kept her eyes straight ahead, feeling that this new Madam was remarkably composed and showed no intention of trying to cultivate a relationship.
She could at least ask a few normal, daily questions, like what Huo Yan liked to do or where they were going to eat later, right?
As she muttered to herself, a voice finally came from the back seat—it was Lan Su:
“Why are we going to a beauty salon?”
Lan Su’s tone was very flat; it wasn’t the sharp coldness of ice and snow, but a naturally plain tone, without noise or fluctuation, like a still glass of plain water.
Huo Yan was listening to an online meeting through her earphones. Hearing her question, she briefly drew a moment of free time:
“For a facial.”
Jiang Feng shrugged. Well, that was a completely pointless dialogue.
Just like every previous Madam, they would rack their brains to initiate a topic, only to have Huo Yan end it with a single phrase.
Unexpectedly, Lan Su continued, “You could have them come to the house.”
Huo Yan paused. “Hmm?”
Lan Su explained, “When you do your makeup and hair, you call the stylist home; you don’t travel a long distance to a studio.”
The car slowed down. Jiang Feng eased off the accelerator, pricking up her ears to listen to the conversation in the back.
She retracted her previous assessment of Lan Su. This new Madam’s perception was shockingly meticulous and different from the previous Madams.
Huo Yan indeed rarely went to the studio. Firstly, it wasted time on the road. Secondly, it wasn’t safe.
Making such a grand exit today was certainly out of the ordinary compared to her usual habits.
Jiang Feng glanced in the rearview mirror. Huo Yan raised a hand to her earphone, muting the meeting.
“I go to a beauty salon for a facial.”
Huo Yan’s explanation was perfunctory.
Lan Su was skeptical but didn’t press the question. It wasn’t that she believed the explanation, but rather that conversations between intelligent people tend to be subtle. Pressing the issue of the beauty salon would, ironically, feel cheap, like haggling in a marketplace.
Lan Su leaned back against the leather seat, her eyes looking out the half-open window, her tone chilling:
“Someone is following us.”
Jiang Feng’s eyes widened. She glanced at the side rearview mirror and, sure enough, there was a familiar grey minivan. She thought she’d seen it before, perhaps leaving the property transfer hall.
It was her fault; her attention had been focused on Lan Su, and she hadn’t noticed the tail.
At the same time, Huo Yan, who had been sitting in the wheelchair in the back seat, finally looked up from her online meeting.
Her languid body slowly sat upright from the backrest. Her long fingers reached up to her ear, removing the black earphone, and her index finger tapped the tablet screen, exiting the online meeting.
Her expression was unfamiliar. Jiang Feng searched her mind but couldn’t recall seeing it before. Her eyes behind the lenses were slightly narrowed, her brows slightly raised, and the corners of her eyes tilted up, as if something had piqued her interest. But it was definitely not the minivan following behind.
It was more the expression of someone accustomed to walking in the dark who suddenly discovers a flower by the roadside—an expression of finding something strange yet amusing.
Her eyes followed the light reflected by the lenses, scrutinizing Lan Su’s face:
“Is that so? Where?”
“A minivan.” Lan Su turned to look at her, a certainty flashing in her eyes. “You knew someone was following us.”
Huo Yan neither confirmed nor denied, simply saying:
“I’m not as omniscient as you imagine.”
Lan Su didn’t believe her evasiveness and explained, “If you didn’t want to be followed, they definitely wouldn’t be able to keep up with you.”
“So?”
“So, you did it on purpose. To expose your whereabouts, to let them find you.”
Lan Su pointed out her intent, followed by the question that had been on her mind the whole trip:
“Why would you do that?”
For a moment, the car was silent, save for the low rumble of the tires over the smooth road.
In the silence, the two in the back seat met each other’s gaze, scrutinizing one another.
Huo Yan adjusted her gold-rimmed glasses, focusing on this seemingly delicate face.
The lines of her brown eyebrows were smooth, and the muscles around her eyes were relaxed, not tense at all. She had a simple and elegant Jiangnan, a region south of the Yangtze River appearance, yet she possessed eyes like a knife.
Beneath the outward obedience was an inherent untamed spirit.
Huo Yan was pleased with these calm yet sharp eyes and thus offered an explanation:
“You need to get used to this feeling. Being watched means being looked up to.”
This explanation was evasive. Lan Su narrowed her eyes slightly: “I don’t understand.”
Lan Su was very calm, without a hint of emotion related to excitement or anger, neither on her face nor in her heart. She was simply curious as to why Huo Yan would deliberately expose her whereabouts and allow others to follow her all the way.
“Heh.” Huo Yan let out a soft chuckle from deep in her throat. Instead of continuing the explanation, she took a step forward, checkmating the situation. “What I’m curious about is that Miss Lan, after being in a coma for so many years, is surprisingly alert.”
To be able to spot a distant minivan.
Snap!
Lan Su felt a jolt, as if her spine had been pierced by an ice block and her throat was being constricted by a hand, air stalling in her lungs.
Her eyelids blinked uneasily, and she abruptly averted her gaze, pulling back the leg that was angled towards Huo Yan. She sat up straight in the back seat, facing directly forward.
“They’ve been following us all the way; it’s hard not to notice. Besides, I was just curious that you enjoy being followed.”
Her explanation was scattered by the wind rushing through the window, turning into ionized particles that lit up the dim lamp of a certain person’s shadowy inner world.
Huo Yan didn’t press her, turning her head to lean against the backrest, as if everything that had just happened was insignificant.
The minivan still followed at a constant distance. Since Huo Yan didn’t suggest changing the route, Jiang Feng continued driving towards the beauty salon following the navigation.
Lan Su quietly kept her heart suspended, waiting for the potential confrontation that could break out at any moment.
She couldn’t be blamed for being on edge.
The Lan family dealt in antiques, and sometimes, for the sake of a small porcelain item, they often clashed with grave robbers and foreign dark forces. If she encountered a car tracking her, she would escape without a second thought.
The most dangerous time was when she had a Song Dynasty ceramic plate tucked away and had to jump from a thirty-meter cliff into a river, drifting with the current for three days and two nights before finally shaking off her pursuers.
The public safety was much better now on the mainland. But there was no guarantee they wouldn’t be cornered by desperate criminals if the car drove into a dark alley or an area without surveillance cameras.
She also wondered where Huo Yan’s bodyguards were and why they weren’t with her today.
Screech—
As she was contemplating, the private car suddenly stopped. She looked up and saw a grand building with the words “Xianglin Xiaoxie Beauty Center” prominently displayed over the main entrance.
There were surveillance cameras at the main entrance of the beauty salon, so they probably wouldn’t make a move here.
Just as she was about to get out, Huo Yan spoke: “You sit tight for a moment.”
Lan Su withdrew the hand that was reaching for the car door, feeling a little nervous—it seemed a confrontation was still imminent.
Huo Yan reversed her wheelchair down the ramp, maneuvering around the back of the car and pulling up to Lan Su’s side door.
Click, the door opened from the outside.
She was met with Huo Yan facing her, her long hand outstretched.
“Hmm?”
Lan Su’s first reaction was a handover of information, but the hand was empty. It seemed, perhaps, that she simply wanted to help her out of the car.
So she reached out, resting her hand on Huo Yan’s, awkwardly using the leverage to step out of the car.
“What about the minivan?” she whispered.
After she was standing steadily, Huo Yan released her hand, deliberately acting intimately by smoothing down a wrinkle on Lan Su’s skirt. She then spoke:
“Don’t worry about them. Once they take their pictures, they’ll leave on their own.”
Lan Su was stunned. “Take… pictures?”